Weekend in Atwater

So we just got back from an exciting weekend visiting my folks in Atwater. The premise for the weekend was a combination of things. My cousin Lindsey got married earlier this year with a small ceremony, but waited until now for the big celebratory shin-dig. Everything was beautiful, but it was unseasonably cold for Atwater in late September, so everyone broke out the jackets and still enjoyed the evening.

In addition to the wedding reception/shin-dig, we were also celebrating a couple of birthdays. My 35th birthday was last week (yes, I'm half way to 70 now), and my mom's birthday was on Saturday (I'm nice enough not to repeat her age). In deference to the party, we postponed birthdays until Sunday morning breakfast at Grannie's Pantry. Nothing quite says 'Happy Birthday' like a big platter of biscuits and gravy. Oh hold on, that's 'Heart Attack', not 'Happy Birthday'. But who cares, it was good stuff.

Well, anyways everyone had a good breakfast at Grannie's, and then it was time for my third purpose for the visit - tech support. Last year, I gave my mom one of my old desktop computers for the Atwater Historical Society to use down at the Bloss House. For some reason, it was powering on, but hanging before it finished booting.

I must've had a good touch, because instead of spending hours fighting with boot configurations and Windows installations, I turned on the computer and it immediately booted up. Ok, I guess immediate is subjective when you're talking about an old Pentium II 200MHz computer.

The good news is that left us some time to tour around the Bloss House and see all the renovations they've been doing. The kids really enjoyed the train room, that has model trains that recreate some the railways in Yosemite Valley.

Also, we ran across the street to the Atwater Rose Garden to look around a bit, and the kids decided to do some impromptu cleanup by picking up all the stray pine cones that had been dropping all over the place.

Since Iain's class has been studying plants recently, he's going to bring a bunch in for share day, so everyone can have their own pine cone to check out. I'm sure all the other parents are going to love us!